The snow had been melting over the last few days, cold crystals transformed into drops that slipped through their still frozen cousins and into the ground. Even at the heights the travelers had camped at, the crystals of the first snowstorm rarely survived their first few days, much less the entire firerest.

            The antelopes wandered from the bubble of warmth as the snow melted, snacking on the scrubby grass of the slope even though they did not really need it. Still, they returned at night to huddle in the magic warmth of the camp.

            As they returned on the third night, Chadder abandoned his daylight watch for his boss and went into the tent to check on his charge. He thought he had seen a person in a gray robe at one point during that day, but it had disappeared before he could be sure. Celeres had been completely consumed by the brown spots. Chadder, well-traveled bug that he was, thought the unusual color might look healthier if it was not so uniform. The wasp had noticed that the color across a human’s skin actually varied quite a bit even without such startling transitions like the ones between their palms and the back of their hands. The color consuming Celeres did not have those variations. Instead, he looked as if someone had dipped him in paint and left him to dry.

            Tilting a translucent wing over the man’s head, Chadder checked to see if his charge was still alive. The shallow puffs of his breath were hard to feel even with wings sensitive enough to shift with the slightest change in the wind.

            Pleased with the man’s continued survival, the bug began to plan his excursion for the next day. Backtracking would not work. They had come too far from any human habitation to find anyone in a reasonable amount of time. He would have to fly high enough to find any roads or houses built in the shadow of the mountain.

            The wasp decided to make his way down slope off the mountain and then circle season-wise around the hills in that area. If that did not work, he would fly back and around the mountain to see if anything else was nearby.

            Satisfied with his plans, the wasp settled down to sleep. He dreamt briefly that his boss had returned with something to heal the sick man and was disappointed to wake and find it untrue. He checked the patient, ate a bit of the food his boss had left behind, and flew out to get help.

            It did not even occur to him to wonder about the yellow patch that had developed on the man’s cheek.

            The day was overcast but dry as Chadder pushed his way through the sky. The snow had all gone, revealing the grass and jutting stone and hardy trees of the mountain’s surface. The camp quickly receded to little more than a dot behind the bug. The rolling vista of the hills and forest near the southern mountains opened up before him.

            No roads or houses immediately presented themselves for his examination, but Chadder did not let that bother him. He banked to the right, carefully examining the landscape as he passed over it. He was so intent in what was below him that he almost dismissed a burst of light in his peripheral vision. After a few moments, it belatedly occurred to him that it might be worth investigating. The cliff wasp adjusted his course again for a spot two mountains away from Mt. Anguis.

            The flash had come from a fight on its slopes. A large, ambiguously-shaped mound of flesh was trying to squash, spear, and slice a nimble human that dodged its attacks. The creature morphed between multiple forms, assuming the shell of a giant clam or the teeth of a shark or the claws of a lion in its attempts to hurt its opponent. The human’s form seem more stable but was odd in its own way. Her skin was pure white in the odd flat way that Celeres’ brown had. By comparison, the bright blue hair cropped close to her head and snow white leathers seemed fairly sedate. Gleeful, Chadder realized he knew her. There could not be two humans on Tiran that looked like that.

            As Chadder flew up on the combatants, the human finally counterattacked. As the creature snapped down at her with a giant scorpion’s sting, she retaliated with a white glowing nimbus around her right fist. A radiant band whipped out from the light, severing the tail from the creature’s ever shifting bulk. The limb fell to the ground and flopped around for a while before shivering to a stop. Judging from the other alien body parts scattered around the battleground, the creature had lost about half its bulk trying to defeat the woman.

            Chadder wisely kept his distance while they fought. After losing a few more projected body parts, the creature finally decided winning this particular fight was unlikely and tried to escape. The woman cut off its wings as fast as it could grow them, so it never got more than a foot or two off the ground. When it tried to burrow into the earth, she drove a spike of light into its body and pulled the creature back out.

            Ruthlessly, she carved away at its body, until less than a man-sized portion of it was still moving. She plunged her light encased right hand into its remaining bulk, sending it into spasms that lasted several minutes. It never moved again after she withdrew.

            Deciding the fight was over, Chadder flew over to announce himself. “Tyla!” he called out.

            She spun, displaying a ring on her right hand, then relaxed as she recognized the bug. “Chadder?”

            “Hi, pretty Ai lady. Bad mating?” the wasp asked as he settled on her outstretched arm.

            “Yeah. You would think they would decide to avoid me, but my reputation seems to drive them crazy. Still, every corpse is one step closer to my goal.”

            “Yes,” Chadder said agreeably.

            “So, where’s Arva?”

            “Gone. Went for medicine for sick man Celeres. Gone too long. Celeres needs help.”

            “Told Arva his job would eventually get him into trouble he couldn’t get out of. Where’s this sick man? Celeres is his name?”

            “Yes. This way. Follow, please,” Chadder said, flying off.

            The strangely colored woman bounded after him, almost keeping up with him with her ground devouring strides. Despite running up slopes and over rough ground, it only took them two hours to reach the traveler’s camp. If the hardship or speed of the journey affected her at all, it was impossible to tell when she entered the bubble of warmth.

            She examined Celeres in far greater detail than Chadder could, checking his pulse and peering into his eyes. She noted with some interest the yellow spots on his cheek and elsewhere on his body.

            “What color did he start as?” she asked the bug.

            “Gray.”

            “And how long has Arva been gone?”

            “Three days.”

            “Where’d he go?”

            “Cave, up top.”

            Tyla thought about that. “Einian’s around here somewhere. Must have been looking for her, which is a stupid thing to do.”

            The woman tied some blankets securely around the ill man. “Well, we’re not going to leave our friend here to waste away while I try to figure out if your boss has gotten himself killed. There isn’t anything I or most other people can do for this Celeres, even if Arva was pursuing an Elder for help. The only ones I can think of off hand is the blood knights. They have to deal with so many weird things coming out of the north-out arm of this continent that they might be able to do something for him.”

            Chadder hummed in sympathy.

            “It’s going to take me a few days to get there and back, bug. You’re going to have to sit tight until I return. If Arva does manage to make his way back here, tell him I took his friend to Bluthafen. Got that?”

            “Yes,” Chadder buzzed.

            Tyla nodded and threw Celeres across her shoulders. She settled the weight across her back and set out to seek the Border Army of the Reformed.

            She used the same long strides she used to get to the camp, setting a pace that would have driven the hardiest of antelopes into exhaustion. Hour after hour and day after night, she quick-marched across the great stretches of land in the center of Zonne. The farmers and townsmen of the land gapped at the exotic human and her burden passing briskly through their ranks. On several occasions, officious gold masks tried to slow her progress. One fool even tried to attack her, only to have his sword split in half by a mysterious burst of light.

            The blood knights guarding the south gate of the fortress town of Bluthafen had some of the lightest duties in the Border Army of the Reformed. To the west and north were the wilds of the north-out arm and the many monsters within. Even with the posts the knights maintained deeper into the arm, monsters sometimes wandered all the way to Bluthafen. The guards of the west and north gates often found themselves fighting a rearguard action against some border beast while a badly wounded patrol retreated to the safety of the city walls. To the east was the Samcar Desert of the north-in arm. The monsters of the outer arm rarely crossed the desert to the civilized portions beyond, in no small part because the desert’s giant spiders ate those foolish enough to enter their territory. Those spiders also occasionally found it tempting to attack the eastern gate. But to the south, the guards faced nothing more exciting than merchants’ caravans and the occasional asylum seeker eager to join their ranks.

            So, it came as some surprise to see a figure in the distance approaching them at an incredible pace. When she had come close enough to see her unusual coloring, the blood knights responded with the professional determination with which they face the unknown. They dispatched one of their number to alert the twenty or so other knights lounging in the garrison behind them. If their total might could not handle this unknown, a second runner would head for the city proper and alert the Supreme Commander of a serious incursion that required the entire force held within Bluthafen’s walls.

            In this case, such brutal measure were unnecessary. The alabaster woman slowed her brutal pace as she neared them and stopped at a more than sufficient distance for their comfort. She set the burden on her shoulders down on the ground and pointed to it. “This man is sick. I ask you to do whatever you can for him. Thank you,” she said. With that, she turned and moved away with the same blistering speed with which she arrived.

            The guards exchanged glances, weighing their options. Plenty of monsters they faced were as clever as humans. Those seemed to take a perverse delight in warring with the blood knights, luring them into danger and trying to trick them at every turn. None of them were eager to explore this potential trap.

            As the ranking knight drew himself to approach the package, the booming voice of the Supreme Commander emerged from the gate. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

            “Sir!” the ranking knight said and crisply rattled off the events that had just occurred.

            The Supreme Commander nodded at the report and wandered over to the bundle. He examined the unconscious man within the blankets, examining the yellow that was displacing the brown across the man’s skin. He grunted circumspectly and called to his men. “Bring a stretcher,” he said. “We need to take this man in.”

* * *

            Celeres woke parched, groggy, and disoriented. He drifted for several minutes, trying to find the strength to open his eyes. When they were open and focusing, he found he was in a room he did not recognize. He felt fuzzy enough that it did not really bother him.

            Finally prodded into action by the pressure of his bladder and the state of his mouth, the young man crawled out of bed. He was shocked by how limp he felt. His legs shook as he pissed in the chamber pot, and the pitcher on the washstand seemed to weigh a ton. He could find no glasses in the room, so he slaked his thirst by drinking directly from the pitcher, splashing water down his cheeks in the process. Exhausted by his efforts, Celeres crawled back into his bed.

            Drained but awake, he gazed at the ceiling. The bedroom was painted a pale yellow that cheerfully reflected the sunlight streaming in from windows on two sides. The furnishings were better than what had been in his parent’s house, although not quite as nice as those in the town of Woodcraft. Idly, he wondered how Sanura had gotten him here after looking for that sword.

            That thought brought him up short. He brought his hands up to confirm what he had seen but not realized. His hands were yellow. In fact, his whole body was yellow. Perversely, the thought entered his head that he probably looked now like one of the nobles of Tagerden.

            A half-dozen questions dashed through his head, all demanding answers immediately. Unfortunately, he also felt far too weak to go running out looking for someone to unload them on. There was a long hour of fretting before someone came to him.

            A tall man in a steel breastplate swept into the room, measuring Celeres with his gaze. The crimson of his cloak played against the yellow of his skin, presenting a regal figure in primary colors.

            “I’m yellow!” Celeres growled at the man.

            “Indeed you are,” the man said, pulling a chair close to the bed. “Didn’t your patron explain that would happen?”

            “What patron? Where’s Sanura?”

            “Who is Sanura?”

            “My wife.”

            “Is she the one who dropped you off by our gates? White skin? Blue hair?”

            “What are you talking about? She has green skin and brown hair. Although since I look like this, I guess she could look like anything by now.”

            The man pursed his lips. “Perhaps we should start over. What is your name, young man?”

            “Celeres.”

            “What is your house?”

            “House? My family doesn’t belong to a guild.”

            “A guild? You aren’t a noble?” the man asked with some surprise.

            “No, of course not. Now, who are you?”
            “I am Vuon, Supreme Commander of the Border Army of the Reformed. You were delivered to Bluthafen in mid-transition under what would have been unusual circumstances even without that. I think you need to tell me who gifted you.”

            “What?”

            “The mark, boy. You think the Emperor doesn’t set firm restrictions on to whom and how the gift is delivered? If your not noble, someone broke the rules, and I need to know who! Now, tell me how you got bit.”

            Haltingly, Celeres told him about being attacked in the street. He tried to explain it without Khenet’s involvement, but it was obvious to Vuon that he was covering something up. The blood knight questioned him closely, dragging out details he had been trying to hide and occasionally forcing the young man to contradict himself. To Celeres’ relief, the knight seemed more interested in his attackers than his allies. By the time he was done, Vuon had a rough idea of the encounters with Braen, Saith, and Prince Emhyr.

            “Sounds like His Highness made a proper mess of things. So busy trying to tie up his buddies’ loose ends, he made your life a lot more difficult than it needed to be. If he had been smart, he would have offered you and your wife palace jobs and taken you to his father to beg forgiveness for his friends’ actions. They’d already received their punishments, and it would have put you where the Emperor could keep an eye on you. Course, I’m not as blood thirsty as the Prince, so to speak.”

            “Excuse me, sir. I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” Celeres said, confused.

            “Despite the horror stories floating around, most hirudin aren’t particularly monstrous. In fact, about a third of the nobles in the Empire are hirudin. On. Zonneshin decided he wanted a least one nation on Tiran that would be loyal to his goals. He chose to establish it on this continent sometime after Maand’s children began to settle here. He gave the leader of a village special strengths in return for his allegiance. Those are the source of the powers the hirudin have in all those stories. The only real side effects were a desire for very rare meat and large drop in their strength when trapped in the dark.

            “On. Zonneshin taught the leader how to spread the gift to his heirs. By biting them, they would slowly transform over the months until they had turned yellow as a mark of On. Zonneshin’s favor. As generations passed, marriage and war spread the gift throughout the leadership of much of the continent.

            “It was a prince named Hirudin who discovered the source that fuels our powers. It is blood that grants us extra strength, which explained the preference for rare meat. He was a cruel man, a second child who killed his sister and deposed his father, instituting a fifty year reign of terror that spread out from the city of Kagayaku on the north-out arm. He reveled in the source of his power, even going so far as to openly sacrifice his subjects for blood.

            “He didn’t rule the entire continent, but his methods spread through those with the gift. Some wielded it openly, some did it in secret. The normal people were terrified but still didn’t realize that the ones who could use the blood for strength were special in some way.

            “That is when the wood folk entered the story. They have their own powers, including some of the secrets of true names. When the newly dubbed hirudin attracted their attention, the wood folk decided to rid their human cousins of the predators living among them. Neither side could overwhelm the other, but both used the normal humans to attack the other. The stories still told today are remnants of the truths and lies both sides told the humans to support their cause.

            “Eventually, the practices started by Hirudin fell out of favor with those bearing the mark, and a truce was installed between them and the wood folk. Still, between the truth of Hirudin and the rumors fed by the wood folk, the gifted decided it unwise to explain their true nature to the normal people they rule. First from Kagayaku and later in Tagerden, the Emperors have strictly banned the hunting of humans by those with Zonneshin’s gift, a state of affairs that has worked well for thousands of years.”

            “I’m a hirudin?” Celeres asked bleakly.

            “No!” Vuon said sharply and placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “No, lad. You are marked as one who carries a gift from On. Zonneshin. The hirudin are monsters who pervert that gift for their own amusements. Never forget that, even deep in your heart. No matter what sort of monster passed it on to you, it is how you choose to bear it that proves your worth. If someone found you worthy of marriage despite what you thought were deadly side-effects of the transition, I don’t think anyone could find grounds to disparage your characters.”

            Vuon held the young man’s eyes with his own until he saw some of the tension drain out of them.

            “Good. Good then. Well, now, why don’t we try to figure out how you got here. Where were you when you when the transition pushed you completely under?”

            “We were on Mt. Anguis.”

            “Mt. Anguis?” the knight frowned. “Goodness, there’s an Elder that lives in the mountain. What were you doing there?”

            “Trying to remove the mark,” Celeres said pointedly.

            “Hmm, yes. I can see that if you didn’t know what was happening to you. It would have been about a week ago if the transition proceeded normally. You covered quite a bit of distance in that time to get here. And the woman who dropped you off doesn’t ring a bell?”

            “No. I was traveling with my wife and another man. They both look pretty normal. Could it have been Einian?”

            “Who? Oh, the Elder in the mountain. No. She’s one of the ancestors of the dragons and none of them look remotely human. Must have been someone they met then. But why didn’t she stay? Too many mysteries. I’ll have to send some knights to the mountain to investigate it.”

            “I want to go with them.”

            “Of course. Will you be ready tomorrow?”

            Celeres started to say yes then recalled how hard it had been to get out of bed.

            Vuon laughed at his crestfallen expression. “Oh, we can get you into shape by then. Transition is hard. Recovery is easy. Here, drink this,” he said and handed him a small, stoppered bladder.

            A rich, delicious scent wafted up to Celeres after her removed the plug. “What is it?”

            “Pig’s blood. Nothing gets the gifted back on their feet quite as fast.”

            Celeres looked dubiously but took a swig. It was surprisingly fresh, like a treat he had never known existed.

            Vuon nodded, pleased. “I’ll send you up some breakfast. We do still need to eat, after all. Some servants will supply you with clothes later, and I’ll make sure my people put together a pack for your trip.”  

            The young man thanked him and the Supreme Commander took his leave.

            The blood and breakfast made Celeres feel better, but he still didn’t feel up to wandering around Bluthafen. Instead, he sat at the window, watching the traffic on the street and wondering what happened to his friends. The marble he had found months ago had somehow come with him to the city. Rolling the smooth shape between his fingers eased his tension.

            He woke in the morning in a state of complete panic. He had dreamt of the confrontation with Prince Emhyr in the clearing. In the dream, the many-armed Cheldean had strangled Khenet with her hands, the Colonel had chopped Sanura into little bloody cubes, and the Prince had started to eat the skin off of Celeres’ body inch by inch.

            Unfortunately, waking did not allow him to dismiss his fear merely as a nightmare. Like a burning, pulsing star, Celeres could sense the presence of Prince Emhyr near Bluthafen.

            The young man burst through his door, pounding down the hallway as if he knew where he was going. Later, he realized he had known exactly that. He was simply running toward a similar but less intense sensation that he had associated with Supreme Commander Vuon the day before. It was not that far, because the Commander had set Celeres up in his villa.

            Celeres burst in on the Commander in his dressing room. Vuon was buttoning on a crimson shirt as he entered. The knight raised an eyebrow at the abrupt entrance.

            “Prince Emhyr is here!” Celeres blurted out.

            “Is that who it is? My line isn’t close enough to his to be able to distinguish it. Of course, yours would.”

            “He’s going to want me!”

            Vuon thought about that. “Probably,” he admitted.

            “You’ve got to get me out of here,” Celeres implored.

            The knight opened his mouth, then closed it, frowning. It opened again and closed with a second frown. A long moment of silence passed.

            Supreme Commander Vuon shook his head. “He can sense you just as well as you can him. If he really wants you, he would just track you down. Shells and shit, he could order me to set the blood knights to hunt you down and kill you. He’s my liege. I couldn’t say no to him.

            “Then I’m dead?” Celeres all but wailed.

            “Wait. Wait. If you were neutralized in a way that wouldn’t compromise him, he might not try to kill you.”

            “What are you thinking?”

            “Asylum. The Border Army is built from criminals and political refugees. In exchange for an imperial pardon, we take the most dangerous duties of the empire, like defending against the monsters of the north-out arm. You will have to risk your life and follow imperial orders for the rest of your days, but the Prince is unlikely to try to kill you if your loyalty is ensured.”

            Celeres thought about it for a moment, fighting against the pounding of his heart. He had already survived a lot on his journey here and thought he might be able to handle the risks of the service. With her skills as a soldier, Sanura might choose to join, too, when they reunited. Thinking of her decided him. If Celeres died here, now, he would never spend the rest of his life with her.

            “What do I have to do?” he asked.

            “Survive your induction,” Vuon said seriously. “This service is not for the weak. You’ll have to cross the Samcar Desert to our sister city Nguyen on the northeast edge using only what we give you. It’s a hard journey, but you have the advantage of carrying Zonneshin’s gift.”

            “I’d better get started then.”

            Vuon nodded, and the two headed out into the streets. They stopped at a large stone building to get Celeres’ supplies. The Commander gave crisp orders and a half-dozen people scattered to fulfil them. Vuon himself pulled out a key, went to a vault in the wall, and unlocked it. He pulled out a thin, silver necklace with a small red stone and put it around Celeres’ neck.

            “You will not be able to remove this. It binds you to us in ways no mere oath ever could. If you try to leave the desert from any way but Nguyen, it will warn you to turn back. If you fail to heed the warning, it will kill you.”

            His people presented Commander Vuon with a backpack of supplies which he passed to Celeres. He pointed to one of his people. “You take this boy to the east gate.

            “Good luck, lad,” the Commander told the young man.

            Celeres trotted out the door, just a few minutes ahead of his nightmares.